


Blood Furnace Mishaps

by sparxwrites



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Blood, Hurt/Comfort, Magical Accidents, Pre-Slash, Vomiting, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 06:19:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5817370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sighing at Parvis’ inattention, Strife looked contemplatively at the furnace generator currently powering the quarry, and the small crystal he knew was at the heart of it, feeding the whole thing with blood-power. “Since you’ve basically got infinite power through this lava crystal,” he mused, slowly, “you <i>could</i> just make yourself a high-temperature furnace generator-”</p><p>(A "Blood & Chaos" scene redux - Strife has an idea regarding fuelling a quarry off of Parvis' blood network, and Parvis pays the price of an experiment gone wrong.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Furnace Mishaps

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve been doing a lot of Proper Writing recently, and i wanted to blow off steam with something a bit easier and more fun. i love the first scene of [this episode of blood & chaos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llQppn3YmtA&index=51&list=PLg4c3_xZsIKiZvgIlgFj3z6Sk1OJGVbLi), so i figured it might be fun to do a redux of sorts. the plot - and all the dialogue, with a few alterations for brevity and clarity - is pulled from the episode, just dramatised.

“It’s basically a system of exchanging efficiency for speed, okay?” Strife explained, gesturing to the quarry they were stood at the edge of, the machinery and the snaking cables and the almost comically tiny furnace powering the whole thing. “And since your blood network puts out _so much_ power…”

“Uh-huh.” Parvis was barely listening – he’d gotten far too good at tuning out Strife’s long, technical explanations of things Parvis had no interest in whatsoever, despite Strife’s continual attempts to teach him. He was staring instead at the water streaming into the hole the quarry had gouged into the earth, a clumsy, man-made waterfall, and trying to ignore the way that the rushing roar of it reminded him powerfully of the blood altar.

Sighing at Parvis’ inattention, Strife looked contemplatively at the furnace generator currently powering the quarry, and the small crystal he knew was at the heart of it, feeding the whole thing with blood-power. “Since you’ve basically got infinite power through this lava crystal,” he mused, slowly, “you _could_ just make yourself a high-temperature furnace generator-”

Making things was for chumps and losers, in Parvis’ opinion. It took time, and resources, and most of all _effort_ – something Parvis hated more than anything else. Closing his eyes, he tried to remember how he’d done it when Ridgedog had visited. There’d been warm hands heavy on his shoulders, dirty-white light blocking out the inventory usually scrawled onto the inside of his eyelids, a voice whispering in his ear…

Drawing in a deep breath, he centered himself as best he could with the restless energy skittering up and down his spine, and waited until he could feel the lines of binary code streaming along under his still fingers. He remembered Ridgedog’s instructions – and Ridge’s broad palm against the back of his neck, Ridge’s solid chest like a furnace against his back, Ridge pressing closer and grinning that dangerous, gap-toothed grin against the tender skin of his throat, but now was not the _time_ for that – and focused, visualised, tugged at the code until he could feel it give and _snap_ with a flash of dirty white that slicked the inside of his skin like oily filth, and-

The high-temperature furnace generator appeared in his inventory. He grinned, wide and toothy. “Made one!”

“-which-” Strife paused when Parvis set the furnace down with a blink of his eyes and twitch his fingers and the clang of metal on metal. “…You motherfucking _cheat._ ” He was grinning reluctantly though, an amused snort tacked onto the end of his words.

“Did it! Did it!” crowed Parvis, delightedly, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet as Strife hummed quietly and examined the piece of the machinery in front of him, carefully checking for any faults or flaws. “Let’s make the- let’s make the thing, let’s do it!”

Strife, determined to _teach_ as always, ignored the borderline aggressive enthusiasm. “So, uh, really quickly here – have a look at the side of the furnace generator, okay?” He gestured at a small screen on the side of the machine still hooked up the quarry and chugging away gently, numbers flickering in green.

Missing the gesture entirely, Parvis peered at the newly-created furnace and frowned when there was nothing to see. It was only when Strife cleared his throat, pointedly, that Parvis looked up and realised _which_ machine he was supposed to be looking at.

“Oh- the furnace generator, ok,” he said, as close to sheepish as he ever got, turning to frown at the panel on the side of the other machine. “Power level, eighty… arr-eff-pee-tee?” he read off, slowly, his frown not easing. He had a strong suspicion he was supposed to know what that was, from one of Strife’s many lectures on the topics of machines and power, but he couldn’t for the life of him bring it to mind.

“RFPT. Redstone flux per tick,” explained Strife, dragging an exasperated hand over his face when he realised that Parvis’ silence was not consideration but confusion. “It’s a measurement of power, it’s how much- look,” he sighed, when he saw Parvis’ eyes glazing over. “Just- look at the high-temperature furnace generator, I’ll put the lava crystal in there-”

Crouching down, Strife tugged a handful of cables out of the current generator, listening to it die with a quiet whine. “If I just-” he muttered, dragging the high-temperature generator over by one of the metal runners that made up its legs, shoving the cables into various slots over its casing. “High-temperature furnace generator. I’ll put the lava crystal in here-”

Pushing himself back to his feet with his hands on his knees and a small wince at the way his back protested, he tapped a square on top of the high-temperature generator, before turning and doing the same to the regular furnace generator. Slots opened in the top of both with a quiet, mechanical whine, and the input trays slid up.

In the furnace generator’s input tray, a small crystal gleamed, red-orange and innocuous for such a powerful fuel source. Hooked into Parvis’ blood network, it offered an unending supply of power – so long as, of course, the altar on the other end of the invisible wire was being fed with blood.

Strife plucked it carefully from where it was hovering within the little static-blue forcefield of the input tray, tugging until the field gave and released it with a small _pop_ and a slight spark. Resisting the urge to suck at the small burn now decorating the side of his hand, and the urge to curse at Parvis for such shoddy craftsmanship, he slotted the lava crystal into the high-temperature generator’s input slot instead and pushed the whole thing back down into the machine.

The effect was almost instantaneous. The generator purred to life with a whine so high-pitched it was almost a squeak, lights flickering on and the quarry grinding back to life with a low, plaintive roar of heavy machinery – and something _hooked_ behind Parvis’ stomach, a sharp tugging sensation that sent his knees buckling in surprise before he managed to catch himself.

“Look at the power level!” crowed Strife in delight, peering down at the small LED screen readout on the side of the machine. “Two hundred and sixty-six RF per tick. Fantastic.”

Parvis, however, wasn’t listening. Instead, he was balancing on suddenly very wobbly legs, one hand pressed to his stomach, eyes very wide. “Oh my _god_ ,” he said, quietly, and something in his tone made Strife look up sharply. “It just- did it just-?”

“What?” asked Strife, frowning, when Parvis failed to complete the sentence and instead continued staring down at his own midsection, face pale with shock. “It’s…?” He hovered, faintly confused, Parvis a frozen statue in front of him and the generator now little more than a quiet hum at knee-height.

“Did it just-” Parvis patted his stomach carefully, where he could still feel the strange sensation of something _lodged_ there – like the split-second weightlessness of stepping off a cliff edge, except unending, a lurch of the stomach frozen half-way through. “Did it just hurt me?”

There wasn’t any blood, nothing _physically_ there, but when he closed his eyes, there it was, the telltale flicker of cracked rubies against the inside of his eyelids telling him that something _had_ gone wrong. “...It _did_ hurt me! A little bit.”

“Really?” Strife peered down at the generator at his feet, at the screen with the numbers flickering across it. Everything seemed to be in order, the numbers ticking away as they should, power levels normal, input and output normal. No warning messages, no flashing lights… there was no reason for it to be hurting Parvis.

“It’s taking-” Parvis was even paler now, swaying on his feet as the hook began to _tug_ , tiny little jolts that didn’t hurt but were discomforting, _alarming_ – and getting stronger with every passing second. “It did something-” He drew in a deep breath, struggling to form sentences through the swimming confusion in his brain that seemed to have snuck up on him. Words slurring, vision blurring, he locked his knees in an attempt to stay upright. “It’s taking energy-”

He cut off, gagging and clutching at his stomach as another, strange jerk sent sudden, aggressive queasiness tightening around his throat. “Parvis?” asked Strife, eyes widening as he took a half-step towards the obviously distressed blood mage, before stopping, unsure if getting any closer was a wise idea, especially given potty mouthed wizardry was evidently at work.

“I’m- getting nauseous-” managed Parvis, face an odd white-grey – before his knees finally buckled and sent him crashing to the ground, slumping forward onto hands and knees as his shoulders shook. His stomach heaved inside him, twisting, as the hook tugged and _tugged_ -

“Oh my _god_ ,” he slurred, the world spinning madly, lips numb and tongue too-heavy, before his stomach gave a particularly violent heave – and then he was too busy throwing up to say anything else.

Strife watched in faint, frozen horror as Parvis heaved and choked, emptying his stomach of its contents. What he brought up, though, looked like _blood_ , dark and crimson and shiny over his lips and chin as he vomited up great mouthfuls of it, shoulders shaking and chest heaving shallowly as he struggled to breathe through the liquid filling his throat.

“Okay!” managed Strife, after a long moment, voice unnaturally high-pitched. He grabbed at his belt and curled fingers around the hilt of his disassembler, flicking it on with a high-pitched hum and the sizzle of electricity as the blade lit up bright blue. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea, okay-”

Parvis couldn’t see anything other than a blur of green and red, barely registering past the way his chest was burning from lack of oxygen, arms shaking from the effort of stopping him collapsing face-down in his own mess. He was sure, if he had the breath for it, he’d be screaming. The hook was _tearing_ , now, dragging slowly through his flesh towards the base of his skull as it tried to rip him in two, veins haemorrhaging and organs bursting and bones cracking, and-

Strife brought the assembler down on the generator, electricity against metal with a crackle-hiss screech. The machine resisted for a half-second, stubbornly clinging to existence, before it fractured, spitting out the lava crystal and collapsing into a holographic point of light that Strife’s inventory wristband sucked up quickly enough. The crystal dropped, unharmed but glowing white-hot, and rolled across the ground, coming to a halt a mere inch from Parvis’ fingers clawed into the dirt.

With a quiet whimper, Parvis’ arms gave out, and he sprawled into the puddle of his own blood that had grown beneath him, dark and congealing on the long blades of the stubby grass.

“Parvis-!” yelped Strife, genuine fear colouring the word as he stumbled towards his apprentice.

Twitching, Parvis drew in a deep breath, jaw working slowly against the grass. His brain was coming back online, slowly, piece by piece through the swimming agony and confusion. He managed a moan, thin and whining, through gritted teeth, prying his eyes open.

Strife swam into focus, blurry and frowning, crouched silently down at his side. His presence shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was, something real and solid for Parvis to cling to mentally as he whimpered, mouth opening and half-closing over and over as he struggled to process what had just happened. It took several long moments, several gasping breaths, but eventually he managed to force unresponsive limbs into movement enough to brace his palms against the floor.

“…Parvis?” asked Strife, his voice quiet and strangled and strangely vulnerable in a way Parvis had never heard before, but was in no position to consider or appreciate at that particular moment.

As Parvis slowly, shakily pushed himself into sitting position, Strife straightened up, having grabbed the now-cooled lava crystal since Parvis was in no state to think about keeping it safe. He blinked in surprise when Parvis swayed sideways to lean heavily against his leg, one arm wrapped loosely around his calf and cheek pressed against his thigh.

“I- I got really nauseous there…” Parvis mumbled – somewhat superfluously, given the blood still smeared over half his face, dripping from his mouth and over his chin, the pool of it on the ground. His eyes were wide and unfocused, breath coming in sharp, hitching gasps. “I’m just… gonna check-”

He forced himself to take a deep breath, and closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his eyelids, his interface glowed in a messy scrawl, a lopsided grid for his items and an uneven line of rubies, all but two missing, and one of those cracked. It made him shudder, how close he’d come to losing all of them.

Reaching out with one hand, he pulled his divination sigil from the top row of the grid, feeling it materialise cool and solid and _real_ into his palm even as he opened his eyes. It was a rectangle of slate, the sigil engraved into the front of it and marked out in gold leaf, small enough for his fingertips to just grip either side of it and hold it steady – or, as steady as he could manage when he was still shaking like he had a bad case of hypothermia.

He pressed the palm of his other hand against the flat of it, and closed his eyes again. _2808 LP_. Lifting his hand, now shaking even worse as the realisation of _exactly how badly_ he’d fucked up sank in, he pressed it down again. _3083 LP_. Again. _3183 LP_. He didn’t need to do it again, but he did, needing the reassurance that his life points really were replenishing. _3247 LP._

Exhaling shakily, he pulled his palm away from the slate and opened his eyes. “Yeah, I had like- like, zero life points from doing that.” He shuddered, curling unconsciously closer to the solid warmth of Strife’s leg. “It absolutely _wrecked_ me.”

“Oh my _god_ ,” murmured Strife, quietly, staring down at the small, innocuous lump of orange-red crystal vibrating gently in his curled fist. The vibration, though, was nothing compared to the way Parvis was still trembling against his thigh, and he let his free hand drop down to touch the top of Parvis’ head.

It wasn’t much, but it was grounding, a warm palm and long, calloused fingers against the windswept, blood-crusted mess of his hair, and Parvis didn’t try to pull away. “It just took a million,” he said, very quietly, storing the divination sigil back in his inventory with a small twist of his wrist. “A _million_.” It couldn’t have been more than a minute between the time Strife put the crystal in and the moment the generator broke.

The noise Strife made wasn’t quite a laugh, but something close, disbelieving and a little shaky. “Like I said.” His fingers in Parvis’ hair twitched, a tiny motion that grew into a slow stroke, fingertips ghosting circles against his scalp. It was oddly like petting a cat, so automatic he barely noticed it, didn’t notice Parvis leaning into the motion with a quiet, shuddering sigh. “Maybe- maybe not a good idea.” He scratched gently at the back of Parvis’ scalp, humming low in his chest as he tossed the lava crystal up into the air and sucked it into his inventory with quick slash of his hand, the cold metal band around his wrist lighting up green with the successful transfer. “Let’s not do that again, okay?”

“ _Okay_ ,” agreed Parvis fervently, clutching Strife’s leg a little in a vain attempt to slow his shaking. “Yes. Yeah, definitely. Let’s _not_.”

 


End file.
